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Corbyn accuses Government of ‘vandalising’ the NHS

New Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the sitting Government of ‘vandalising’ the NHS in his widely anticipated first speech to the Labour Party Conference.

Mr Corbyn said that the NHS is being ’threatened by the idea that profit comes first, not the needs and interests of our people’.

He said this would be ‘the difference between us and the Tories’ and made a commitment that Labour will ’always put people’s interests before profit’.

But his key message was for people not to ‘take what you’re given’ from the current Government, including Prime Minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne’s NHS funding policies.

He said: ’That has always been our Labour Party’s message. You don’t have to take what you’re given… But they’re at it again, the people who want you to take what you’re given, this Tory Government.

‘They want us to believe there is no alternative to cutting jobs. Slashing public services, vandalising the NHS, cutting junior doctors’ pay [and] reducing care for the elderly… They want the people of Britain to accept all of these things…

’Well, they’re not having it. Our Labour Party says no. The British people never have to take what they are given. And certainly not when it comes from Cameron and Osborne.’

Mr Corbyn also used his speech to say that he was ’going to challenge the Tories to make parity of esteem for mental health a reality not a slogan’, via his appointment of Luciana Berger as the first shadow minister for mental health.

Readers' comments (8)

Corbyn says people don't have to take what they are given. In his Utopia people take whatever they want from you and claim it is their right to take everything you have. There is no limit to how much the welfare class can take from you. How lovely.Welcome to Comrade Corbyn's Soviet Union.

Soviet Union! At least this Jeremy is saying it straight.Remember I'll cut the deficit not the NHS?No top down reorganisation? (Look where Lansley is now!)Cameron is slashing welfare without job growth. More than 2 faces I think!We need to invest in public services again or hand it all to private finance! Look where the drive for profit has got the rail service, water, sewerage, G4S, Serco, Virgin. All struggling to make profit in ex-public services. Dare I mention private sector greed, pay gap between CEO and worker, cheating to sell cars, horse meat, big pharma etc.................

I'd rather have Corbyn's Soveit Union than see the decimation of NHS. Remains to be seen, if and when they come to power, will Labour be able handle the trail of destruction this government is going to leave. He's a politican too and so let's take this with a pinch of salt

At least Corbyn is a human beingNot an extreme right wing corrupt nut job like the brutal autocratic selfish millionaire ignorant fools now in charge whose motivation is clearly personal enrichment At least he is not a corrupt serial liar like camoron who makes Pinocchio look like Gandhi Only a politician could claim 22 billion cuts over 5 years as an extra 8 billion?Do they take us for complete fools?Do they think we do not know of their 100 cronies in parliament with unacceptable private health care connections?Do they think we do not know the at least 5 billion yearly waste on their failing privatisation fetish?I may not agree wholly with Corbyn but anything would be better than the present shower so emblematic of the deep malaise of our failed archaic inefficient alleged democracy

Comrade Corbyn,s policies will increase our tax bills so much that it won,t be worth going to work.No-one has the guts to say that we cannot afford an NHS free to all at the point of delivery,An ever increasing population.ever increasing elderly population expensive new drugs investigative tests complex surgery and an ever increasing expectation by the public fuelled by publicity is driving up costs at such a rapid rate that financially we cannot cope with.That is why there is no other country in the world providing such a service

Actually comrade last post the only conceivable way to contain costs is by a return to real nhs not the present disastrously damaged part privatised fragmented monstrosityOf course we have to have a national debate on what the nhs does and does not and there needs to be a much stronger system of personal health responsibility We can afford this though we should spend more like 11 per cent than our internationally low 8 per cent GDP.Private and insurance based systems will fail first .All waste has to endie internal market pfi trusts and the massive bureaucracy that market 'reforms ' since thatcher have created.. Tripling it to ten billion a year does not suggest to me more of the same to be a remotely sane option